Incident of the French Camp

First publ. B & P iii (DL), 26 Nov. 1842, with Soliloquy, which followed it, under the collective title Camp and Cloister, the poem was called ‘Camp (French)’. Repr. 1849 (when it was separated from Soliloquy and given its present title), 1863 (when it was placed in Romances: see Appendix A, p. 464), 1863², 1868, 1872, 1888. Our text is 1842. DeVane (Handbook 111) notes the public interest in the return of Napoleon’s body from St Helena and its reinterment in the Invalides in Paris, 15 Dec. 1840; in 1841 B.’s friend R. H. Horne published a biography of Napoleon (see below). We conjecturally date the poem to early 1841. DeVane has the date of reinterment as 1841, an error repeated by both Penguin and Oxford, and hence ascribes the poem to 1842.